Finished!

Here's the Minimalist Spring Things--you may recall I ripped the ENTIRE thing out in a fit of craziness and restarted it. Sorry about the crummy picture. It was harder than I thought to photograph.

The stockingette portion is error free now, and what I did of the lace part ended up OK, except I knit the third chart first instead of the second. How could anyone do this without noticing? Quite the bonehead I am sometimes. It was getting down to the wire for my gifting deadline, so I crossed my fingers, worked the edging, and bound off, hoping for the best.

Blocking ROCKS. Next time I'll use those wires I forgot I had. The shawl stretched way out and the points became pointy instead of curly and, best of all, the shawlette isn't impossibly shrimpy as one would expect of a shawl with half the required border. In the end, I'm fine with it. I won't be embarrassed to give it to my husband's Granny when she turns 90 later this week.

I learned an incredible amount from knitting this. I learned to read the chart, I sort of learned how to read my knitting and see most mistakes, I fixed one really weird thing that happened, and I learned that I am at times crazy enough to rip out weeks of work (next time, Heather, put the knitting down and WALK AWAY). I learned that I can, with compromises and sufficient motivation, finish an object in time for a deadline.

Now all I have to do is keep my big, somewhat insecure mouth shut and not point any mistakes out to anyone in at the birthday party. I don't want to ruin the gift for Granny.

The best part is still the dye job, though.